Meaningfully demonstrating impact can be hard. In this section of the guide, you will find tools that can be used by governments, organizations, and communities to track performance, collect data, and manage impact metrics. In addition to resources for building monitoring and evaluating systems, you can also explore databases to analyze public policy as well as researches on how entities and nonprofits that use tech and data are generating positive effects.

Indicators

Indicators are used to measure concrete progress towards larger goals. For example, the UN Sustainable Development Goals include 232 indicators to mark progress.

Certifications

Learn about some of the efforts to signal a base level of quality or assurance based on a third party’s evaluation. Certifications can not only be helpful to show evidence of results, but also to evaluate progress within organizations and identify some of the challenges along the way.

Report cards and audits

This section provides systematic analyses to evaluate promises made by governments and other institutions, and track the performance of programs, initiatives, or projects. Are they working? How well?

Needs assessment

This is a whole subfield of work to determine the needs of a given population. Tech tools might help estimate needs before formal needs assessments can be conducted.

Benchmarks

Benchmarks are often used to evaluate projects. They may consist of a set of baseline data gathered from a cohort of related actors in a field. Knowing this baseline performance data allows project owners to reflect on their own impact in relation.